Alex Jones loses Supreme Court appeal over US$1.4 billion Sandy Hook defamation

The US Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to hear a challenge by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to a US$1.4 billion judgment awarded to families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Connecticut over the Infowars website founder’s false statements that the 2012 incident was a hoax.

The justices turned away his appeal of the Connecticut Appellate Court’s decision in a defamation lawsuit against him to uphold most of the judgment issued by a judge and jury in 2022 to 14 family members of children and school employees who were killed and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting.

In doing so, the top US judicial body left the judgment in place.

Twenty-six people – 20 students and six staff members at the school in Newtown, Connecticut – were killed in the incident by a 20-year-old former student, who then fatally shot himself.

Jones had argued that the judgment in the lawsuit brought against him in Connecticut violated his rights under the US Constitution to due process and free speech. It is believed to be the largest judgment in American libel case history, according to his filing to the Supreme Court.

He also lost a similar lawsuit in Texas, though the roughly US$50 million judgment in that case was far lower. Jones is separately appealing that judgment. He declared bankruptcy after losing the lawsuits.

Jones was sued for defamation after he called the shooting a “false flag” operation meant to stir up anti-gun sentiment among Americans, and had said that the parents of the slain children were “crisis actors” who were faking their grief in television interviews.